


The Genevan Paso Doble

by FullmetalChords



Series: let's go steal an ice rink [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gun Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, awkward first meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 01:52:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/pseuds/FullmetalChords
Summary: Insurance investigator Victor Nikiforov's world is turned upside down one night in Geneva, when he comes face to face for the first time with the thief he comes to call "Eros". Little does he know that their chance encounter will change the course of his life forever.





	The Genevan Paso Doble

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for part of yoificfriday's weekly theme, Awkward First Meetings. It uh, got really out of hand. 
> 
> This is also _very technically_ a Leverage crossover (and a prequel to my ongoing Leverage AU), but no knowledge of the show is needed to understand what's happening. He was a boy, he was a thief, can I make it any more obvious, etc. 
> 
> Please pay attention to the fic's rating and warnings. This fic contains some gun violence (nothing graphic or lethal), nonexplicit sexual content, and minor character death.

Of all the dozens of functions Victor Nikiforov had attended since starting his work for ISU, this one is by far the most boring.

He’s in Geneva, at a party designed to display Bulgari’s new couture collection. Wealthy, well-dressed women wear diamond pendants the size of quail eggs, while the men have gleaming, high-end watches that Victor can never hope to afford. This room easily holds millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry, all insured by ISU. Victor’s job is to protect his company’s investment, working with the banquet hall’s security to prevent theft or damage.

But god, how _dull_. The conversation around him is as vapid as with any other function, models draped off of executives’ arms cooing over one another’s jewelry, men discussing the intricacies of the stock market and company portfolios. Victor takes a sip of champagne, already thinking with longing of returning to his hotel suite just to escape this crowd.

Waiters circulate throughout the room, offering more champagne or canapés to the guests. Victor snags a blini topped with caviar and puts it into his mouth almost absently, doing his best to stay alert –

\--and then someone knocks shoulders with him.

“Ah, please excuse me!” It’s one of the waiters, dark hair slicked back from his forehead, same white shirtsleeves as the rest, holding an empty silver tray at his side. He offers Victor a quick bow in apology before straightening and hustling back through a door that, presumably, leads to the kitchens. Victor watches the man go for a moment before turning his attention back to the party.

And then, almost without thinking, he turns on his heel, following the waiter into the staff area.

“Hey.” Victor doesn’t shout the word, but the waiter still stops dead anyway. They’re in a deserted back hallway, the kitchens through another pair of double doors to the left. “Mind giving my wallet back?” Victor finishes, tossing an almost cheeky grin to the back of the stranger’s head.

The waiter turns, and Victor gets a good look at his face for the first time all night. He’s Japanese, with a soft, rounded face and the darkest pair of eyes Victor has ever seen. He feels like they could swallow him whole.

The man swallows. Victor watches his Adam’s apple bob.

“Fine,” he says – his voice is crisp, accent untraceable. He fishes in his pants pocket and holding up Victor’s leather wallet, waggling it back and forth in his hand. “Try to catch it, then.”

He chucks it, without warning, in the space above Victor’s head, and just as Victor flinches the man makes a break for it, darting sideways into the bustling kitchen. Victor stumbles, scooping his wallet off the ground, and runs after him.

Or, he tries to, except at that moment a flood of waiters come out, each bearing silver trays, with the same uniform and same hairstyle as the man who tried to rob him. 

“Damn!” Victor tries to get through them, but he knows it’s no use. Oh, well. No harm done. His wallet is mostly intact, other than a photo of Makkachin he kept tucked in the billfold that seems to have gone missing.

Or at least, he thinks that’s all that’s missing, until the Marchioness starts screaming in the middle of the banquet hall about a priceless sapphire necklace that’s somehow disappeared off her neck.

Well. His week just got a bit more interesting, he supposes.

 

\--

 

The Marchioness’s necklace is never found. ISU isn’t at all happy having to pay the five million dollar insurance policy for the theft, which means, in turn, that _Yakov_ , ISU’s CEO, is positively livid with Victor for letting it disappear under his nose. Oh, well. The company will live, and so will the Marchioness.

Victor puts Geneva from his mind, puts his head back down and devotes himself to his work. His job, his mother, and his dog are the only things he really has in his life; Chris teases him about it often, saying he can find a nice man for Victor to settle down with, but Victor hasn’t taken him up on it. He hasn’t been promoted five times in the past five years just to slow down now. 

The job, of course, feels old hat by now: monitoring security for assets ISU is insuring, tracking down thieves if an asset goes missing. It used to give him such a thrill, like he was a private gumshoe in a film noir. But now, at the top, he can’t help but feel like he’s spinning his wheels just a little.

ISU’s latest contract is in Florence, in one of the smaller museums. Nearly thirty works of art are under Victor’s responsibility – Caravaggios, Rubinses, even a van Gogh or two – and he walks through the gallery with their chief of security, monitoring their various anti-theft measures.

“Trackers on the back edge of each frame,” the man tells him in Italian; Victor nods along. “We’ve upgraded our motion sensors, tightened our lockdown procedures… I’d like to see a thief get their hands on one of these masterpieces.”

No sooner has he finished that sentence than a shrill noise pierces the air, like a teakettle that won’t stop whistling.

“Let me guess,” Victor says drily to the stunned guard. “That’s your anti-theft alarm.”

“ _L… le uscite!”_ The man starts barking orders into the radio on his belt, but Victor finds his eyes drifting upward. The building is one of those ostentatious old palaces, thirty-foot ceilings decorated with restored frescoes. There’s a shadow on the ceiling at the far end of the gallery, a dark figure swaying as if on a rope, and the guards are already clustering beneath it.

Victor almost scoffs. No, no, he thinks. Only the most amateur thief would try to pull a lift that way. The guards are chasing a patsy, or maybe even a mannequin. He takes a brief moment to count the haircuts clustering beneath the dark shadow: eight, nine, ten, eleven. This building has twelve guards on staff. Where is the last one?

Victor turns on his phone, flicking to the app that’s connected to the trackers at the backs of each of the frames. Most of them are dotted around the gallery he’s in, which is where they’re supposed to be. But there’s a cluster of about ten at the back of this building, near one of the loading docks. Victor’s only just identified the dots before they start to zoom away, down the street.

Ah. There’s the twelfth guard.

He tracks the stolen paintings to a hotel just outside the city. He breezes past reception, following the dots on his phone to the right room, and promptly proceeds to kick the door down.

The frame around the door gives after only a few kicks, and he makes it inside to see a multitude of priceless works of art, each with their frames still intact. A man crouches with his back to Victor, carefully cutting a Caravaggio out of its frame.

“Freeze!” Victor snaps, reaching for the pistol on his belt. The man, already startled by the way he broke the door down, quickly reaches for a snub-nose resting on the hotel bed.

He only registers that he’s been shot by the time he realizes the man’s pointed the gun at him.

It’s far from lethal – a graze on the outside of his thigh – but it still stymies him, knocking him to one knee. The man turns to run for the window, and Victor squeezes the trigger of his own weapon, the bullet hitting the thief in the shoulder. The man lets out a pained cry, stumbling.

“You— _bastard…!_ ”

He turns back to glare at Victor, and for the first time he gets a good look at the thief’s face – Japanese. Round face. Dark, dark eyes.

“You,” he realizes, then winces with pain as his injured leg gives out. He eases himself to the floor. “I know you. You stole the Marchioness’s necklace.”

The thief blinks. “What are you talking about?”

“Geneva,” Victor says. “Last year. You tried to steal my wallet, don’t you remember?” But the thief’s look is still blank. “You kept a picture of my dog.” 

The other man looks stunned, also slumping to the floor as he grips his shoulder. “I… I don’t remember Geneva much. Drank too much before a job. N-nervous…” He carefully peels back his suit jacket, trying to get to his wound. “Woke up with a five million dollar sapphire necklace and a photo of a poodle in my pocket. The poodle is… is yours?”

Victor nods, studying the other man carefully. In the year that’s passed since their first brief meeting, he’s built up this image in his mind of a dashing phantom thief, a suave mastermind who can vanish into a crowd at a moment’s notice. The man in front of him now seems nothing like that, shaking and stammering. Though, in fairness to him, that could be the bullet wound.

“Where’s the necklace?” Victor wants to know, because he might as well.

“Sold it.” Victor had expected as much. “Kept the picture, though. I love poodles.”

Victor laughs a little at that, hissing between his teeth. “You should’ve sold that, too. People would pay billions for a photo of my Makkachin.” The thief laughs too, his head resting against the Caravaggio. “What’s your name?” Victor can’t help but ask. “Mine’s—“

“You’re Victor Nikiforov.” Victor’s a little taken aback. The thief snorts. “Don’t be so surprised. There isn’t a thief alive who doesn’t know who you are.”

“I suppose I’m flattered.” It was inevitable, he supposed, what with the number of criminals he ended up pursuing. “Who are you, then?”

The thief just shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to call the police in a minute anyway, right?”

Well, it’s not like he’s _wrong_. Still, Victor finds himself craving more than that. He wants to know everything about this captivating stranger. He looks around the room and his eyes fall on another painting, this one by Crespi. _Eros in the Guise of Cupid._

“I’ll call you Eros, then,” he decides, and the thief – Eros – flushes.

“Y-you can’t call me that!”

“Why?” Victor can’t resist grinning at him. “I’ve got to call you _something_.” He fishes in his jacket pocket for his phone. “Let’s see. I should probably call us an ambulance before the _polizia_ , no?” 

“N-no… no, _wait._ ” In a flash, Eros is across the room, his hands grabbing Victor’s wrists. With both of them sprawled on the floor like this, the man is practically in his lap. He sees Eros swallow, feels his grip loosen a little. “One hour,” he finally says. “Let me patch up your leg, and in return, give me an hour’s head start.”

Victor looks up at Eros. His eyes are softer this close up, framed by thick, dark lashes. It’s a bit difficult for Victor to look away, to focus on what’s happening, with those eyes drawing him in.

“What about you?” he asks, nodding at Eros’s shoulder. “You’re bleeding worse than I am.”

Eros glances at his wound for a moment before turning away with a shudder. “It’s fine,” he says, though he grits his teeth. “It was through and through. I’ll live.”

The blood is staining Eros’s white shirt, the damp patch spreading the longer Victor looks at it. His stomach flops.

“I’d like to take care of you, too,” Victor finds himself saying without much thought.

But Eros just glares at him, even though he’s clearly in pain.

“You don’t get to say that,” he bites, “when you’re trying to arrest me.” He’s got a point, of course, and Victor feels himself deflate with the reality of the situation. “One hour, Nikiforov. Do we have a deal?”

Victor looks up into those deep brown eyes, locked so seriously onto his, and feels himself fall, just a little. He nods, and Eros does too, grimly.

“Good,” he says. “Take off your pants.”

Eros’s hands are shaking as he cleans Victor’s wound, using a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a roll of actual gauze. Victor marvels at how prepared he is, and says so, but Eros doesn’t respond. He doesn’t say much of anything as he finishes cleaning and bandaging the gash on Victor’s thigh, though the way his hands linger when he’s done wrapping gauze around his leg makes Victor’s heart pound, in a way it hasn’t in _years_. He wants to beg Eros to stay, to chase this feeling a little longer…

…but then the thief pulls his hands back, and the moment is lost. Victor finds himself reaching for him anyway.

“Your name,” he asks, and Eros stills under his fingers. “Please.”

He can see Eros hesitate, just for a moment. Then he _lunges,_ taking Victor’s tie in his hand and leaning to whisper in his ear.

“One hour,” he repeats, voice hardly more than an exhale. “Keep that leg elevated, Nikiforov.”

And then he’s gone, breezing out the hotel room door, pulling a heavy overcoat over his shoulders to disguise the bloodstains on his clothing and donning a pair of thick glasses that change the shape of his face. Victor lets out a breath he doesn’t remember holding.

In the end, the only phone call he makes is to the museum, letting them know he’s recovered the paintings.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t tell ISU about Eros. They wouldn’t care to hear, anyway, since all of the paintings were recovered intact. All Victor has to remember the thief is a scar on his left leg and the memory of those dark eyes, fixed on him.

Work keeps him busy, keeps him traveling. He has contracts in Paris, New York, São Paolo, Lagos, Moscow, Beijing, Milan, Dubai. He stops home for mere days at a time, just long enough to have afternoon tea with his mother and give Makkachin a month’s supply of belly rubs.

“At least I have Makka to keep me company when you’re gone,” his mother teases one afternoon, and Victor laughs. She’s been frail the past few years, with a nurse that comes by to check on her four times a week since Victor so often can’t. It makes him feel better to know that neither she nor Makkachin is too lonely, since he’s gone so much.

But he’s haunted by Eros still. Not because he got away from Victor twice now, but… there’s something about him that makes Victor want to know everything about him, to keep all his secrets. Sometimes, when Victor is alone at night, aching for someone to hold him, he finds himself wishing that he’d tried bargaining for Eros’s phone number instead, just so he might see him again.

And either Victor is going slowly mad, tormented with the thought of this thief, or he actually _is_ seeing him again.

He sees Eros as a danseur touring with the Mariinsky, his perfect arabesque helping him blend in among the professionals onstage. He sees him in the dress of the Japanese Imperial family, magnanimously accepting a generous donation on behalf of an orphanage in Kyoto. He sees him as a fumbling art student, back hunched over a sketchbook in a sculpture gallery. He sees him as a mortgage broker in a local bank, wearing a cheap suit and a completely hideous blue tie.

Different names, different accents, different personalities. Yet they’re all clearly the thief he shot in Florence.

Each time Victor sees him, he knows he should involve the authorities. Victor is an honest man whose life’s work involves minimizing theft, and here is Eros, an untraceable chameleon who keeps coming after Victor’s company’s assets. He _should_ call the police one of these days, if only to save his company the headache.

But he doesn’t. The idea that the authorities might catch Eros, that Victor might never see him again, is almost too much to bear.

It’s been three years since Geneva, and Victor is on La Rambla in Barcelona, there to review some paperwork for the policy on Casa Batllò. Tour groups are all around him, a smattering of tour guides with telescoping poles that are all surrounded by East Asian businessmen, all in different bright T-shirts. The crowd is a mob of different colors, the division between groups easy to spot between the magenta and the teal and the kelly green.

Victor’s absentminded contemplation of the scene before him is interrupted by a question.

“ _Shashin o totte itadakemasu ka?_ ”

Victor recognizes the words for “photo” and “please”, but it’s the voice that makes him turn around, coming face to face with Eros. He’s wearing a neon yellow T-shirt that matches that of the group around him, holding an expensive camera out to him, and his eyes seem to smile in invitation. 

“A commemorative photo?” Victor answers in English, taking the camera with a wink. “Sure.” He snaps a photo of Eros in front of Casa Batllò, both of them oblivious to the tour guide already moving on, herding the group inside.

“ _Arigatou gozaimasu,”_ Eros says, bowing deeply and repeatedly as he takes the camera back from Victor, clearly doing his damnedest to stay in character. Victor stays unimpressed.

“Eros,” he says simply. “What are you here to steal this time?”

Eros straightens, his cheesy smile fading from his face to be replaced with a more serious expression.

“You don’t know that I’m here to steal anything,” he says, tilting his head. “Maybe I just had a craving for paella.”

Victor can’t help but raise an eyebrow. “Do you?”

He loves the way Eros flushes, shuffling his feet. “No,” he admits. “But I’m not coming after ISU property this time. You won’t have a reason to chase me.”

Any good citizen would hear those words and call the police on Eros anyway. Victor stays silent, his cell still in his pocket.

“Shame,” he says. “I do enjoy chasing after you.” Eros colors even deeper, and Victor drinks in the sight of him.

This is, by far, the longest conversation they’ve shared since that day in Florence. And after months, years, spent pursuing this man, longing in some deep way for him, Victor is desperate to have this moment for as long as possible.

“Eros,” he begins, and Eros looks up at him with those wide, dark eyes. “Have dinner with me,” Victor says, all in a rush, afraid of losing his nerve. Eros’s eyes go even wider.

“If this is a trick—“

“No,” Victor says quickly. “Never. I… I want to get to know who I’ve been chasing.”

Eros picks the place – an out-of-the-way neighborhood _cerveceria_ that serves greasy tapas and cheap beer. He tells Victor about a childhood in a seaside town in Japan, about the years he spent studying ballet, about the first pockets he picked. Victor tells him about his dog, his mother, about some of his more interesting cases.

“How do you know I’m not lying to you?” Eros asks him, an hour and a half into their meal. They’re lingering over the last of a shared portion of _patatas bravas_.

Victor shrugs. “You could be,” he admits. “But the best lies are half-truths. I’d rather have half the truth from you than nothing at all.”

Eros looks away at this, picks at a potato chunk with his fork and sticks it hastily into his mouth.

“Why do you want to _get to know_ me, anyway?” he mutters, his mouth half-full. “I’m nothing but a dime-a-dozen con artist. And you’re… you.” 

Victor can’t think of an answer that Eros might believe. _Because you’re a mystery worth solving. Because you’ve made this job interesting for the first time in years. Because I only feel alive when I’m thinking of you._ “Because you’re fascinating,” he finally says, his chin propped up on his hand. “Probably the most fascinating man I’ve ever met.”

Eros doesn’t even bother hiding his surprise, his mouth dropping open in a small O. He shakes his head.

“You,” he says simply. “You never fail to surprise me, Victor.”

He reaches across the table, brushing the inside of Victor’s wrist with his fingertips, carefully, as though afraid he’ll break something.

But Eros is anything but hesitant some scant minutes later in the alley outside the _cerveceria_ , pressing Victor into the brick wall, that hot mouth bruising his. Victor’s heart is racing, he feels _light_ , and he paws at the ugly T-shirt Eros is wearing, wanting to pull him even closer. 

“Eros,” he murmurs, as Eros’s lips trail along Victor’s jaw. “Eros…”

Eros pulls back, and Victor takes in the sight of him, hair disheveled, mouth red and swollen.

“Call me Yuuri,” he says after a moment’s hesitation, and covers it by swooping in to kiss Victor again. Victor feels as though he could float away.

“Yuuri,” he repeats into Eros’s— _Yuuri_ ’s mouth, and he can’t help the grin that washes over his face. “Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri.”

It could be another half-truth the thief tells to protect himself. Victor doesn’t really care at this moment. At least now he has _some_ name to put to the man in front of him, the man he would rather die than let go of.

“Victor,” Yuuri says, pulling back to press his forehead against his. “Victor, I… you asked me why I was here. I went to Casa Batllò because I knew that’s where I’d find you.”

“Oh,” Victor says, memories breaking through the haze of lust. The tour group. The commemorative photo. “Really?”

“I had to see you,” Yuuri breathes, hands running over Victor’s shoulders. “You’ve… you’ve been on my mind for so long. I didn’t know what would happen, but I…”

“Yuuri,” Victor interrupts, and sees him flush deeper at the sound of that name. “I missed you, too.”

They end the night back in Victor’s hotel room, lips wandering over the scars they left one another in Florence, hands mapping out one another’s bodies. And Victor’s last conscious thought before falling asleep in Yuuri’s arms is that if this is a con, if all Yuuri is after are his secrets and his money, then he’d happily forfeit them all just to make this moment last longer.

 

\--

 

“You’ve met someone,” Chris says when he next sees Victor in the office. Chris is about Victor’s closest work friend, and certainly the coworker he sees the most. “Good! Happiness is a good look on you.”

Victor flashes Chris a grin before heading for the coffee machine. He tries not to think about how, if Chris knew who Victor was seeing, he’d call him a lunatic.

 

\--

 

The next year is a blur. Victor’s work keeps him busier than ever, allowing him to spend less and less time with his mother. He gets to see Yuuri maybe once every two or three months, with the grifter always finding his way to Victor, and never the other way around. It’s not all time spent in Victor’s bed, either. Yuuri knows quite a lot about art, and they end up visiting museums together sometimes, though Victor usually precedes these visits with a cheeky reminder to his lover not to steal anything while they’re there. They go to dinner, or walk through open-air markets. One night in Buenos Aires, they go dancing, and Victor is drawn into the steps of a tango with Yuuri, marveling at the way he moves to the music and the way he feels in Victor’s arms.

“Why haven’t you turned me in?” Yuuri asks him one night, after about a year of their arrangement. He’s lying on his stomach, nude but for the sheet slung over his back, cheek pillowed against Victor’s thigh. “You know what I do. Hell, it’s how we _met_.”

Victor’s been wondering that himself for a while. He leans back against the headboard, taking a moment to think.

Even so much as talking to Yuuri, let alone being in bed with him like this, is something that Yakov would sneer at as _intensely disloyal_ , at the very least. Victor thinks of the works of art Yuuri has stolen, or attempted to steal, over the years – the property of the rich and powerful, the kind of people who treat capitalism as a game they have to win, never satisfied until they’ve taken everything for themselves. Victor is supposed to protect people like that, no matter how much their greed makes his skin crawl. He isn’t supposed to stand up for people like Yuuri, who grew up in poverty and turned to stealing as a way to survive.

Being with Yuuri now, here, is no impulse, the way it might have been a few years ago. It’s a deliberate choice he makes again and again, and it’s one entirely at odds with what has been, up to now, his life’s work. Victor knows it’s a contradiction, but one he doesn’t quite know how to reconcile yet.

Victor reaches down to stroke Yuuri’s hair, carding it back from his face. “Because you’re too beautiful to be behind bars,” is what he ends up saying, winking down at Yuuri. The thief blushes, but he also scoffs.

“You’re getting awfully blasé about the fact that you’re dating a criminal,” he accuses, looking up at Victor in amusement. “I thought you were supposed to be an honest man.”

“Oh, no, _pupsik moy_ ,” Victor says teasingly, still petting Yuuri’s hair. “I’ve been waiting all this time for you to make an honest man of me, haven’t you realized?”

He waggles the fingers of his right hand at Yuuri, grinning at his lover. Yuuri doesn’t laugh along, instead pressing his lips thoughtfully to the top of Victor’s thigh, along the scar from the old bullet wound.

“An honest man, huh,” he murmurs, lips brushing Victor’s skin.

Victor feels Yuuri slip away for a couple of hours in the middle of the night – not entirely unusual, although Victor makes it a point not to ask where he goes, as long as Yuuri stays away from his clients’ property. But Yuuri is back in the morning, fully dressed and kneeling on the edge of the bed.

“Victor,” he greets when he sees that his eyes are open. Victor smiles at the sight of Yuuri in the sunlight and lazily stretches on the bed.

“Good morning, _solnishko moyo_ ,” he says with a yawn. “Where do you want to go for breakfast?”

Yuuri answers by gently taking Victor’s right hand in his. Victor can feel his fingers trembling.

“ _Solnishko_?” Victor is instantly more awake. “Yuuri?”

Yuuri still says nothing, but fishes in his shirt pocket with his free hand. He pulls out something gold that catches the light, and Victor feels his heart stop.

“Yuuri,” he breathes, and thinks he might start crying.

“Victor,” Yuuri says again, and gently slides the ring onto Victor’s finger, in spite of his own shaking hands. “Thank you for everything up until now. Keeping me safe, but… but more than that. You’re about the only person I have looking out for me, so…” He swallows. “It means… it means so much to me. Please, keep taking care of me.”

Victor is frozen, looking at the ring newly adorning his finger. It’s plain gold, nothing like the extravagant pieces Yuuri usually goes after. Its weight is warm, solid. He never wants to take it off again.

“Please say something.”

Victor looks up at Yuuri, taking in his anxious expression, his deep, deep blush.

“Did you steal another one?” he asks him.

“What?” Yuuri blinks. “You… you don’t like it?” Victor notes that he doesn’t even try to argue that the ring isn’t stolen.

“I love it,” Victor breathes, leaning forward to cup Yuuri’s face in his hands, to lean his forehead against his. “I’ll wear it for the rest of my life. But you need one, too.”

Yuuri’s mouth works silently for a moment before he gives up, leaning into Victor with a watery laugh, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Okay,” he says after Victor dries his tears, reaching back into his pocket and pulling out a fistful of gold rings. “Pick out a good one for me.”

 

\--

 

Victor’s elation at being secretly engaged to a thief is short-lived.

His mother, sickly for the last few years, ends up in the hospital not long after he comes home with Yuuri’s ring on his finger. The doctors’ prognosis for her is grim. Advanced liver cancer. The treatment for it is expensive, more than Victor can afford on his own.

He has insurance, of course, and so does his mother, both through ISU. He submits the claim on the same day he meets with her doctors, sending a memo to the medical sector of his company so the claim gets processed quickly.

It’s denied.

“Listen, Victor,” says the head of the department when he storms into her office, demanding an explanation. “The treatment you’re asking for is experimental, highly risky. We can’t, in good conscience, cover it.”

Victor is no stranger to the intricacies of the world of insurance, how calculated each offer of “help” is. ISU has never cared about anything but its bottom line, and there is no profit in treating a sick old woman.

 _She’s dying_ , he wants to plead. _She’s my mother_ , he wants to say.

He forces his face into a smile instead.

 

\--

 

They bury Victor’s mother on a Tuesday morning.

The funeral is attended by her friends, by Victor’s coworkers. Victor and Makkachin stand at the front while the priest delivers his sermon. They watch as her coffin is lowered into the ground. And Victor feels nothing, nothing, nothing.

He ends up at a bar afterward, demolishing a bottle of vodka almost by himself. The burn of the liquor down his throat is a distraction, forcing back the screams he wants to let loose.

“I think you might have had enough,” the bartender says at the end of the night.

The voice is familiar.

“Yuuri,” Victor slurs, and nearly slides sideways off his stool. Yuuri darts, quick as a flash, to his side, helping him sit upright. “You’re here. You’re here.”

“I’m so sorry,” Yuuri murmurs into Victor’s ear, his chest providing support for Victor to lean back against. “My flight was delayed. I wanted to be there for the service.”

Victor wonders how Yuuri had heard the news in the first place. Yuuri has gone through so many burner phones that Victor doesn’t have the first clue how to reach him.

“You’re here,” he mumbles again, turning to press his face into Yuuri’s collarbone. A hand comes up to card through Victor’s hair, and he feels cool metal brush against his skin. His ring. Yuuri’s still wearing it. “You came to me,” Victor chokes through the lump that’s risen in his throat. Something wet is running down his cheek.

“Shh, my white knight,” Yuuri says, pressing his lips into Victor’s hairline, rocking him gently back and forth. “I’ve got you.”

Yuuri helps Victor get home, where he’s promptly sick in the toilet, the vodka burning worse coming back up. Yuuri holds back his hair, his hands cool on Victor’s fevered face.

“They killed her,” Victor sobs, all but wrapped around the bowl. “They killed her. I gave them everything, and they killed her.”

Yuuri stands by him, murmuring sweet nothings, helping Victor wipe his mouth. There’s nothing else either of them can say.

 

\--

 

Yuuri doesn’t stay forever, no matter how badly Victor wants him to. No matter how badly he thinks Yuuri _wants_ to. The reason he’s usually so hard to get a hold of is because he never stays put for long, always staying abreast of local authorities. Victor spends three and a half weeks in his arms, lying in bed between him and Makkachin, talking of everything and of nothing. It makes Victor long for a place they can be together, where Yuuri doesn’t have to worry and where Victor can keep him safe.

“I wish I could stay,” Yuuri says on the night he leaves, and Victor knows he means it. Yuuri brought almost nothing to St. Petersburg with him, nothing more than could fit in a standard briefcase. He bought new clothes here that are all staying with Victor, as a reminder of the life they can’t have.

Victor takes Yuuri’s hand, running his thumb along his ring.

“We’ll be married soon,” he says with a brightness he doesn’t feel. “Then we can be together, wherever you want. We’ll have a dozen poodles, and you’ll surprise me on my birthday with a Faberge egg. I’ll even pretend you didn’t steal it for me.” Tears form at the corners of Yuuri’s eyes, and Victor fights against the burning in his. They both know it’s a fiction, another half-truth. They won’t be getting married anytime soon, not for the lack of wanting, but because Victor can’t risk creating any paper trail that could lead the police to Yuuri.

Yuuri shakes his head, openly crying now. “I _hate_ this, Vityenka. I… I don’t want to leave you, but…”

Victor takes Yuuri in his arms, holding him tightly before he has to let him go again.

“I know,” he whispers. “I know.”

 

\--

 

Victor is let go from ISU a few months later. It’s about what he expects, given that he’s barely come into work all that time. He spends more time in bars these days. He never gets quite as far gone as he did on the day he buried his mother, but he can probably count the number of sober days in that time span on one hand.

Yuuri had given him a number to call if he needed anything. “You’re the only one who has it,” he’d promised, slipping the piece of paper into his hand. “I won’t have to change it, I promise.”

Victor called maybe twice, has texted a little more than that, but it’s never enough, not when he what he needs is for Yuuri to be with him always.

What he really needs, he thinks hazily one night at the bar, nursing a glass of scotch, is a sign. From Yuuri, from the universe, whatever. Some sign that he might someday, somehow, get what he wants.

He gets one when three Americans approach his barstool with a job offer. Well, as one of them puts it, “job” might be a little generous.

“You… want my help,” Victor repeats, looking from one to the other. He’s not entirely sure what they’re asking – a request to consult in security, maybe. “So, what, you… you want me to stop these three from working together?”

He taps the three sleek dossiers in front of him, three profiles he’s already familiar with. Yuri Plisetsky. Otabek Altin. Phichit Chulanont. Some of the most skilled thieves he’s ever come across. All people he’s run into before, in one way or another.

“They _can’t_ work together,” the woman says impatiently, her mouth twisting. “That’s the problem. That’s why we need you. That’s why _they_ need you.” Victor stares blankly at her, feeling more lost than ever, and the woman sighs. “Hardison,” she pleads, looking to one of her companions.

The Black man to her right sits up straighter. “Right. Uhhh. Victor,” he says, reaching across the table to Victor. “You ever think about playing the other side of the law?”

Victor’s eyes go wide.

 

\--

 

He catches up with Yuuri in Fukuoka, dancing in a local ballet company. They run through a dress rehearsal of a ballet Victor doesn’t recognize, but he realizes, after a few minutes, that it’s the story of Eros and Psyche, that his love is the one dancing Eros. Victor can’t help but smile, lost in memories as he watches from the back of the theater. He remembers, so early in their relationship, when he’d seen their own love story as similar to this one. He’d imagined himself as Psyche, fighting to prove that she was worthy of the love of a man she’d never seen in the light of day.

Things are about to become different.

He waits behind the theater after the show, a little way from the stage door, and waits for Yuuri to come out.

“Beautiful,” he says, applauding lightly when Yuuri finally comes out. His lover startles, looking up from the screen of his phone. “Absolutely stunning. You could have been a dancer in another life.”

“V-Victor?” Yuuri takes a few steps closer, as though he can’t believe his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Chasing you,” he says with a pleasant shrug. _Hopefully for the last time._

Yuuri opens his mouth to say something, then shakes his head.

“I’m not like that anymore,” he insists. “This isn’t a cover. I’m… I _live_ here, in a shitty apartment, and I dance. It pays almost nothing, but it’s… it’s honest. _I’m_ honest.”

Victor shrugs, grinning widely at Yuuri. “That’s too bad. I’m not.”

Yuuri blinks in surprise. “What?”

Victor takes a few steps closer, still grinning. “I’m playing on your side now.”

“Victor…” Yuuri shakes his head again. “Why?”

He’d come up with a hundred reasons on the plane, about the sliding scale of morality and the heartlessness of corporations’ bottom line and his powerlessness to save his mother and his desperate desire to do _something_ to stem the world’s corruption. They all still apply, but he looks into Yuuri’s dark eyes and knows none of them are the right reason.

“Because that’s where you are,” he says simply, and Yuuri gasps, softly. “Or where you _were_ , I suppose. But if you’d rather become a dancer—“ 

“No!” Yuuri says quickly, and Victor’s mouth snaps shut. “No, that is, I…” He laughs softly. “Dammit, Victor. Here I am, going legit for you, and you go and surprise me all over again.” 

His expression is soft as he looks at Victor. Fond. Victor is sure it mirrors his own.

“Is that a yes, then?” he asks, hope blossoming in his chest.

“You haven’t asked a question,” Yuuri points out with a grin.

“Ah, I suppose you’re right.” Victor clears his throat, extending his hand ostentatiously to the man who’s captivated him for nearly six years, the man he’s been chasing for all this time, now finally within his reach.

“Yuuri,” he declares. “Starting today, I’m going to be your partner in crime. Together, we can cut corrupt corporations like ISU down to size.” He throws in a wink for good measure.

Yuuri stares at him for a moment before he starts to laugh.

“That still isn’t a question,” he giggles, but he moves in anyway, wrapping his arms around Victor’s waist. “Oh, Vityenka.”

Their lips meet in the middle, and Victor thinks it’s one of the sweetest kisses they’ve ever shared. It’s like something’s finally clicked into place between them, that they can run together instead of Yuuri always running away. Things have been just a little bit broken between them for so long, but this…? Working together, picking up where the law leaves off? Being able to share a life with the person he loves most in the world?

Victor will never understand how he got so lucky.

“Let’s go fix the world,” Victor says against his lover’s mouth, and Yuuri smiles in agreement.

**Author's Note:**

> notes notes notes notes
> 
> \- This fic is named after a con on Leverage nicknamed "the Genevan Paso Doble". Its true significance is unknown. (Also obvious banquet reference is obvious.)  
> \- I'm headcanoning these two to be a bit older than they are in the show? Victor is maybe in his early 30s while Yuuri is late 20s.  
> \- Drunk!Yuuri probably hadn't picked a pocket in literal years, but he saw Victor at the banquet and wanted to hold onto some part of him to remember that night. Obviously it didn't work, but he did get a really cute Makkachin picture out of it.  
> \- speaking of Makka, he moves in with the team when their HQ is settled. He grifts sometimes, when the occasion calls for it, but otherwise he's just team mascot.  
> \- Just in case, certain scenarios from this fic were lifted more or less wholesale from Leverage. I'll call it a "homage". 
> 
> I owe a HUGE thanks to the Victuuri Writing Chat on Discord for helping me out with foreign language stuff and helping to calm my nerves about this fic. Also, shoutout to my literacy final project for being so excruciating that it made me want to write some cool sexy thief shit, rather than spend another second doing the work. 
> 
> This is a precursor to the heist I'm currently STRUGGLING TO WRITE in my other fic, "The Triple Lutz Job". So if you enjoyed this, I hope you'll check that out as well! There's more Victuuri flirting, Phichit hacking everyone's social media, and, eventually, lasers. 
> 
> #watchleverage
> 
> Hmu at [phoenixrei](http://phoenixrei.tumblr.com) on Tumblr! Would love to chat with y'all there!


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